Introduction It’s been a wild ride for the Despicable Me franchise over the years. None of the films ever got to a Pixar level (although even some of their films have disappointed as of late). However, there’s no denying how ridiculously popular they are. They have all been profitable, with almost all of them making [...]
Intro An old alternative birthday song has the line, “One year older and wiser, too.” While it’s true that each year we age we (hopefully) gain wisdom, that wisdom is also only earned by each year or stage of life offering unique challenges. Writer/director Josh Margolin’s new film, Thelma, explores some of these challenges in [...]
Intro It's no secret that Pixar has been in a bit of a slump, both creatively and financially. They haven't had a financial "hit" since 2019 with Toy Story 4 (which I still dislike). It arguably hasn't had a genuinely great film since 2020's Onward (my favorite film of that year). There are lots of theories as [...]
Introduction I honestly can’t think of two middle-aged actors that I love more than Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. Gosling’s charisma is only rivaled by another Ryan (Reynolds). But Gosling has the acting chops to be hand-picked by the best directors working. David Leitch’s new film, Fall Guy, happens to have both of them. And it [...]
Music, more than anything, has the power to evoke powerful emotional memories in a way that no other medium can. Boston’s song “More Than a Feeling” does an exquisite job musically describing this phenomenon. Another lesser known and melancholier example is Dave Potts’ “Old Chevelle.” The Greatest Hits (Ned Benson, 2024) is trying to capture [...]
Introduction You might not know about the Dreamworks curse, but I assure you it’s very real (with objective data to back it up). The Dreamworks curse is where a Dreamworks animated franchise peaks at its second installment and then only goes downhill in quality from there. Sometimes the decline is dramatic (the Trolls and Shrek [...]
When one hears the words “horror” and “comedy” put together, the films that come to mind are Robert Zemeckis’ Death Becomes Her or even 2015’s The Final Girls. Each of these movies tries to do something different. They are both funny, but Death Becomes Her wants the characters to be unlikable. Whereas Todd Strauss-Schulson’s The [...]
We've all been there: we're in a movie theater and someone in front of us stretches and we are blinded by their Apple Watch. The good news is that there is a way to stop this from happening so that you are not the person who does this. I know that I get irrationally angry [...]
It's that time of year again where Hollywood celebrates and promotes the best that it has to offer to the world. This morning at 5:30 PT the nominations were announced at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. There weren't many surprises, with the exceptions of Greta Gerwig [...]
2023 for me was the year of great scripts. My top 6 all have Oscar-worthy screenplays and it made for a truly wonderful year in film. It's also the year that Marvel might have downgraded to being on life-support (I can't believe that no MCU film made the list here). But let's get to it! [...]
